NEW ZEALAND: Jacinda Ardern promised “relentless positivity” as New Zealand’s Prime Minister, but in announcing her shock resignation on Thursday admitted the unrelenting demands of the job had finally worn her down.
A fresh-faced Ardern was elected Prime Minister in 2017, and in a tumultuous first term faced New Zealand’s worst terror attack, a deadly volcanic eruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just 37 years old at the time, she became the country’s youngest Prime Minister since 1856 and a global icon for progressive politics.
Ardern won a landslide second term in 2020, but her popularity has been on the slide as she battles declining trust in Government, a deteriorating economic situation, and a resurgent conservative opposition.
The stress has been evident in recent months -- Ardern showing a rare lapse of poise when she was unwittingly caught on microphone calling an opposition politician an “arrogant prick”.
“This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life. But it has also had its challenges,” Ardern, 42, said on Thursday.
“I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple.”
Ardern is quitting after a tumultuous five years that shot her to global stardom as a progressive leader but left her ground down by the challenges at home.
Here are three moments that marked the leadership of the 42-year-old Ardern, who declared Thursday: “I know that I no longer have enough in the tank.”
Baby makes UN history
Ardern won accolades in September 2018 when she was photographed kissing and bouncing her then three-month-old daughter, Neve, inside the hall of the United Nations General Assembly -- the first such appearance by a baby in the organisation’s history.
She was only the second prime minister to give birth while in office after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990. “I want to normalise it,” Ardern told CNN. “By being more open it might create a path for other women.”
Mosque attack
Ardern won widespread praise for her response to the March 2019 Christchurch attacks, when a white supremacist gunman targeted two mosques during Friday prayers, killing 51 and seriously injuring another 40. When she donned a headscarf and comforted victims’ families after the shooting, it resonated globally. She would later describe it as a spontaneous gesture of respect to the Muslim community.
She also won plaudits for swiftly enacting gun law reforms and pushing social media giants to address online hate speech.
Ardern found herself again comforting a shocked nation nine months later when a volcanic eruption at White Island, also known as Whakaari, killed 21 people and left dozens more with horrific burns.
‘COVID election’
Ardern won a second term by a landslide in October 2020, snatching a clear parliamentary majority as she rode a wave of “Jacindamania” popularity underpinned by her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ardern, who cobbled together a coalition government in 2017, dubbed her second win “the Covid election”.
She campaigned on her Government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, which at the time had claimed 25 lives in a population of five million. New Zealand only fully reopened its borders in August last year. The total number of deaths attributed to COVID has now climbed to 2,437.
- THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
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